Conventional video game systems often provide a series of scenes presented sequentially. Each scene often provides a number of challenges that need to be overcome before a player moves on to the next scene. If a player fails to overcome the challenges within a predefined number of attempts, the game is over. When the player starts a new game, the scenes already completed are replayed. A player then replays easy scenes, but then is still left to overcome the previously uncompleted scene. If a player continually gets stuck at a particular scene, such a player often becomes frustrated.
One solution to avoid replaying scenes is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,699,127, entitled “Real-time replay system for video game”, issued on Mar. 2, 2004. U.S. Pat. No. 6,699,127 proposes a system to save keyframe information for re-rendering the game universe on subsequent playback. However, such a system is limited to saving keyframe information, which provides limited playback options. In particular, a game user in such a system is limited to returning to the certain saved keyframe locations.
It would be desirable to implement a mechanism to capture encoded video and/or audio to be used along with saved keyframes, or other information, to re-render a game universe on playback after optionally replaying a scene using trickplay features.